Abstract Summary
This study measured the impact of a training intervention on subject teachers’ language awareness (TLA). Subject teachers from multilingual classrooms in France (N = 30) participated in daylong workshops and were given a month to practice the new methods. TLA was measured through questionnaires, videorecorded workshop observations, and focus groups.
Abstract :
Anywhere in the globalized world, a language learner who has a smart phone and internet connection can interact with multiple facets of their L2. In their leisure time, many of these same language learners engage with the social media application Instagram. Rather than considering these two things independently, I propose that L2 learners become multilingual Instagram users. There are different possibilities for multilingual involvement on Instagram: from seeking out original L2 content, to disabling and re-enabling automatic translation functions to create parallel texts, as well as the creation of L2 content by learners. My journey as a polyglot informs this presentation of methods that transform Instagram into a language learning tool. Aside from my experience as an avid Instagram user in five languages, I draw from applied linguistics research on multimodality in language acquisition and I use the pedagogy of multiliteracies described by Cope & Kalantzis (2015) as a theoretical foundation. Rather than yielding to the ease of using automatic translators and making social media content conform to our L1, I show how to harness a popular social media tool in order to promote polyglossia.
